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Friday, November 30, 2012

Tired of how dated your Moodle 1.9 resource and activity icons look? Aren't those icons so 2004? Hold on a second. What year are we in? 2012! Tired of getting information overload everytime you hit that "Turn Editing On" button? Despair no more. Now you can give your Moodle 1.9's site a new 'makeover' without converting the entire site to Moodle 2.4!

In case you didn't know, Moodle 2.4 comes with a new icon set, professionally designed by Barbara Ramiro, a talented and prolific Graphic Designer. Thanks Barbara! The new look is fresher and more modern. Check out the new set in this PDF file on moodle.org: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/images_dev/e/e8/Moodle_icons_24.pdf
Isn't that simply mouth-watering?

Well, the other I was admiring the new icon set when it hit me that I could 'upgrade' my Moodle 1.9 standard icons for some of the new Moodle 2.4 offerings, all without too much effort. Here's the result.

The new editing icons are now less distracting. The new icons are fresher and have replaced the original dated icons. The result? Enhanced usability, in my humble opinion.

How did I do it? It's simple. Just go to the demo Moodle 2.4 site at http://qa.moodle.net/ and then right-click on any icon and save it to your harddrive. It'll be a svg format. Use any image editor and convert the icon into gif format. Then replace your Moodle 1.9 icon by ftp'ing the new gif file into the appropriate folder of your Moodle 1.9 activity or resource. For example, the icon for the standard forum in Moodle 1.9 is /mod/forum/icon.gif. So just drop the new icon.gif file into that directory and your site is good to go!

Here's what my Moodle coursepage looks like with Settings set to off.

So what do you think of my Moodle 1.9's user interface icons makeover? Does it improve the usability of the site? Does it enhance the user interface? If you want a copy of my gif'fed icons, just send me an E-mail request. No charge.

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I'm still learning about E-Learning and so that makes me a learner still. Even Yoda had to be a learner. Love learning with Moodle, chess, reading war non-fiction books, married to one wife with two lovely girls.

MOOWhy Moodurian?

Hacking Moodle code (PHP) is like tackling a durian.

You have to prise it open with care minding the spiky thorns. Once past this stage, you can enjoy the creamy fruit that lies within. So it is with these hacks. Navigate carefully past the perilious code hacks/mashups and you will enjoy the power of Moodle to enhance your classroom!

Disclaimer: If you want to use these hacks on your own production site, you do so at your own risk. If you need any help with any of the hacks on my blog, feel free to email me at boonsengkam@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Cheers.